Sri Lanka heads for snap parliamentary election as Rajapaksa tightens grip: Report
01 March, 2020
Sri Lanka's new president is defined to dissolve parliament shortly and call snap a legislative election half a year before schedule, a state-run newspaper said on Sunday (Mar 1).
Gotabaya Rajapaksa is likely to exercise his constitutional power to sack the assembly when it completes four-and-a-half out of its five-year term on Sunday night, the Sunday Observer said.
Rajapaksa, 70, won a landslide at November presidential polls and appointed his older brother and former president Mahinda as prime minister in a move that saw the family consolidate their hang on power.
"The Gazette Extraordinary will be issued announcing the dissolution of today's parliament at the end of the completion of four-and-a-half years regarding the provisions of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution," the Observer said quoting its sources at Rajapaksa's office.
Official sources told AFP that a general election was probably in the ultimate week of April if the 225-member national assembly is dissolved by Monday as widely expected.
Mahinda, who had been president twice and prime minister thrice, is expected to lead the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP, or People's Front) party to a comfortable victory.
Political commentators have said it could be a formidable challenge for the opposition to avoid Rajapaksa securing a two-thirds majority that will allow him sweeping powers to govern the country of 21 million people.
The United National Party (UNP) of former prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been suffering from a debilitating internal power struggle.
The Rajapaksas are adored by the Sinhala-Buddhist majority - but loathed among minority Tamils - for spearheading the defeat of separatist militants in '09 2009 to get rid of the island's 37-year ethnic war.
Prime Minister Rajapaksa announced last month that the united states was withdrawing from a UN resolution investigating alleged war crimes in '09 2009, a move that was seen as boosting his popularity with the Sinhalese majority.
Mahinda was president when Sri Lankan troops defeated Tamil Tiger guerrillas in 2009 2009, but rights groups accused the army of killing at least 40,000 Tamil civilians in the ultimate months of the conflict, a charge Colombo has denied.
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